The state chronicle. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1883-1893, 1887-09-01
PENCIL MARGfNALIA...FO sun.
DAY READING.
BY h. F. M.

BY h. F. M.
Especial Cor. STATE CHRoNICLE.l
If The preacher who was king in Jerusa
lem we're living in this generation. hs
wou.,i hardly find occasion for the exhor
tatlon, ''Say not then, what is the cause
that the former days were better thar
these?"
In this age of innovation, iconoclssm
and warfare against all that is venerable
and established, 10 occasion exists to ap
prebend an over wrought devotion to the
past. A century which owes to Mr.. Dixon
the discovery that Lord Bacon was not
only the wisest and brightest, but also the
purest and nObleSt of mankind; a century
| indebted to Mr. John Richard Green fol
the information that John, of England
surnamed ''Lack-land, was heroic and at
| tractlve, a cOnsummate statesman and
general, while that great puludin of 70.
nance, Warwick, ''the King Maker" was
accounted a poltroon by those who fought
against him; century which dares the at
tempt to transfer to the brow of Bacon,
those laurels which the judgment of three
hundred years has awarded to Shakspere,
is scarcely amenable to the charge of blind
and stubborn conservatism. One would
have thought, however, that this pitiful
effort to disparage the worlds greatest in
tellect as it was the most futile, so it
would have been the last; but behold a
writer in a recent number of Temple Bar
rises up to assert that Hamlet, ''that mys-
terious star paved Nalhalla and temple of
the gods, as Carlyle not unjustly terms
it; Hamlet, whose wel-nigh unsearchable
meanings exercised the deep soul of Go
ethe, challenged the metaphysical genius
of Coleridge, and stirred to heights of no
blest temper the eloquence of DOWden; is
but burlesque and travesty Oh Tadgedy,
which we are no longer to regard as sweep
ing by us ''in sceptered pail" but as pos
turing and mouthing before us--the glass
of fashion and the mould of form in des-
perate rivalry to Don Whiskerandos, and
Ophelia mingling her tears with the senti-
mental Tilburinas. Out upon such,
''You do it wrong, being so majestical
To offer it the show of violence;
For 1t Is, as the air, lnvulnerable,
And your vain blows malicious mockery.'
Jean Paul Richter. somewhere In his
Levana, treats US to the views of an ad-
venturOuS skeptlc, who offered to find a
heresy in every line of the Lords prayer.
| had always doubted the bona fide of this
offer until seeing the proposition of the
Temple Bar gentleman to demonstrate that
Shakspere designed Hamlet to be 1.-The
most deXterOus travestie, the hugest bur-
lesque that the world has ever seem
Now, | doubt no longer.
Speaking of Richters Levana, what a
felicitOus title that was for work on ed
ucationl I4evana, according to De Quin-
cey, was the goddess of education, whose
Office it was to be present at the birth of
every child, and as it fell, with its face to
the EARTH to RAISE 1T UP and lift LEvARE)
its forehead to the stars. l will not assert
that the former days were BETTER than
these, but when | find such noble concep-
tlons as this all along the pathway of old
Roman thought, l can but apprehend that
those ancient cogltaterS were ALMOST as
SMART as We are.
am pleased to notice that great law
book house of Boston has recently pub
lshed a new edition of DR.. South's SER
mons. At first thought it would seem
strange work for such an establishment,
| but in fact it is highly appropriate. 1t il,
or should be, the ambition of every law
yer to accomplish what he can in the way
of acquiring a graceful, forcible and idio
matte manner of expressing himself in his
mother tongue. No greater master of ex-
preston can be found than Robert South
SO unan mousiy called 1.-The witty Or.
South, as to subordinate his great powers
of logic and eloquence. ! readily grant
he had much wit, and, unlike Sir Hudi-
bras, was by no means ''shy of using it,
but, in ALL that makes a great orator, he
was UNSURPASSED. Hereafter, | propose
to quote from and comment on him large
ly. At present, | can give but two ex
tracts to stimulate an appetite for more
/. INGRArlTUpE-''Su Surely, Nature gives
no man Il mouth to be always eating and
never saying grace"
2. PENANCE-''He that thinks to expiate
| a sin by going barefoot only makes one
folly the atonement for another. Paul
indeed was scourged, by the Jews, but we
never read that he scourged himself. The
truth is, that if mems religion lies no deep
er than their SKIN, it IS possible that they
may scourge themselves into very great
improvements.